ISRAEL: Israel's hardliner policies in the Gaza Strip came under double attack early this week when a leading rights group and a U.N. agency chief both accused it of violating international law. A report by Human Rights Watch said the destruction of thousands of homes in southern Gaza along the border with Egypt, could not be justified on military grounds. The head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Peter Hansen, said a recent offensive in northern Gaza had left up to 700 people homeless. The Human Rights Watch report, entitled: "Razing Rafah – Mass Home Demolitions in the Gaza Strip", said: "The pattern of destruction strongly suggests that Israeli forces demolished homes wholesale, regardless of whether they posed a specific threat, in violation of international law." The New York-based organization's executive director Kenneth Roth questioned Israel's insistence that the demolition of more than 2,500 houses over the past four years was necessary to destroy underground tunnels used by Palestinian militants to smuggle weapons into Gaza from Egypt. Rather, he said the demolitions were about "creating a buffer zone, slice by slice" to facilitate long-term control over the Gaza Strip.
